Politics and greed and technomania aside, I think the systematic, wholesale abandonment of analog technologies now underway for many years is a huge mistake. I can’t say more without lapsing into raving screed mode. 
Well, I fixed it this morning. Rescanning the HDTV didn’t help. I tried three times with the antenna in different positions. What fixed it was hooking up the HDTV to the second antenna, the one that my computer-TV uses, and all the channels came in fine. Once the channels are in the device, it takes some adjusting of the antenna, but there is usually a position where the channel will come in. If the TV doesn’t get a channel on the scan, it doesn’t exist as far as the TV and remote are concerned.
I’m sure millions of folks are experiencing similar troubles, or worse. It is a good thing I know how to fiddle with these devices. The average person might have given up in despair. It took me over an hour this morning plus half an hour yesterday. I have owned the TV for a year now and am used to all its quirks. A person that just bought the same TV and antenna for the changeover would never have gotten it right without major help.
Rescanned, got rid of the double channels (4-1, 4-2, and 4-3 come in twice on both TVs). Still have that message that is obviously intented for DISH customers. And still have 2 channels that scanned in that are blank - had that in Feb but thought something would show up after today.
I miss the days of plugging the TV in and turning it on and just changing the channel without all this fuss.
I remember test patterns for hours a day. Then the show you were waiting for would come on in a fuzzy black and white. My dad was always fussing with the video controls, trying to get a better picture. At least the old sets were better for the waistline. If you wanted to change channels (the rotary dial went from 2 to 13), you had to get up from the couch and walk across the room. You would never be able to sell that idea today.
I find modern TV pretty hard to watch. The large screen sizes and bright pictures that are often quickly flashing from light to dark make me want to close my eyes and dream of quieter times, as I find this a visual and auditory assult.
With ye there Bro…
Slan,
D. 
Not to mention constantly having to adjust the horizontal and verticle “holds” to keep the picture from flipping. And the fact that the picture would turn to static whever someone turned on a vacuum cleaner or microwave, or when the ham radio operator down the block powered up his equipment. And having to put tin foil on the rabbit ears, and to constantly adjust them to get a signal.
When I was a kid, we only had three channels, and we had to buy TV Guide if we wanted to see what was on any of them. The fare was very much regulated by time of day: Morning was news, then kids’ shows until after 8:00, at which point it was game shows until noon. At noon we had news again, then soap operas until 3:00, after which it was kids’ shows again until the news at 5:00. 7-9 was “prime time,” when there would be family shows (unless they were preempted by a sporting event or a special family movie). At 9:00 we had news again, then movies. More news at ll:00, then old, B-rated movies or re-runs of shows like “The Love Boat” until sign-off at 2:00 a.m. Saturdays were cartoons until noon, then sports or old movies. Sundays were religious programming until noon, then sports or old movies. Boring! Sunday nights were marginally better, as we had Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom,” followed by “The Wonderful World of Disney” (usually watched while eating Campbell’s soup on a TV tray!)
I still remember what a big deal it was when they added a fourth channel (PBS). Then we’d visit cousins in the mountains or on a farm and find out that they couldn’t get TV at all (I remember how excited my cousins in rural California were when they got cable, and could finally actually see what was on TV!). And when we finally got cable…wow! We discovered there was an entire world of TV fare out there other than the same old stuff we’d been fed since I was old enough to crawl.
I can’t lie…I enjoy TV. I don’t live in front of it, by any means, but I love curling up in front of it in the evening after dinner and watching our favorite shows. I enjoy variety, and would never want to go back to the old days.
Redwolf
I thought this all happened in February? 
I apparently missed something 
My tv didn’t explode last night at the midnight changeover so that’s good. But seriously, it’s summer doldrums. My only spike is Operacion Repo and Burn Notice. Oh yeah, and Rescue Me, though it gets so filthy that I feel like I need a shower after watching it sometimes.
You gotta watch Operacion Repo. You can see some scenes at Hulu or TruTv. Stranger than fiction. new episodes Monday night at 10. but they run up with two hours of episodes before…
Doug, Charlene and Redwolf, those were great posts of the “good old days” of TV
We didn’t have the channel changing exercises though- we only got one channel.
It wasn’t until the late 60s that Dad devised an antenna, hooked to a motor, on a tower on top of the mountain that could be rotated from down at the house with some kinda little box thing. He and I strung the tv antenna wire and electrical wire way up to the top. Then he also rigged up telephone line and two phones so I could be at the house and tell him, up on the tower on the mountain, when he had the antenna in a position that would pick up another channel. Somehow he’d fix the settings and the whole thing worked. 
We then could get three channels good enough to stand to watch.
Amen. Me too.
Being the youngest in my family, I was the remote control - anybody wanted the channel changed, they made me do it. I was the one who had to stand to hold the antenna in the right place, too.
Actually, it happened yesterday just after noon.
Izz, it was supposed to happen in February, but they delayed it (even though it had been planned and announced for more than a year before) to give everybody a few more months to get used to the idea.
Redwolf
I remember when I went off to college in 1979, with the little black and white TV my dad had won in an amateur golf tournament in the early 70s. At that time, the only way to get reliable reception was to hook up to the antenna on top of the dorm. You paid a fee, then bought about 20 feet of antenna wire, hooked it up to the back of the TV and, on the appointed day, hung it out the window so the handyman could hook it up for you. The dorm looked like a zebra, with dark brown antenna wire zigzagging up and down the outside! And even then you were lucky if you got two measly channels. 
Redwolf
You know what I really wish we’d had back in the day? Tivo…or at least a VCR! I was a major fan of the old Irish Rovers TV show, and would have loved to have been able to record them. As it was, I used to sit in the living room on Wednesday nights with a cassette recorder to record the songs…and woe be unto anyone who slammed a door or entered the room talking between 7:00 and 7:30!
Redwolf
There were four channels here, when I was a child, and all had been on the air since the 50’s (one since the 40’s). There was good reception from the hill where we lived. 2 NBC, 6 CBS, 8 ABC, and 11 OETA. There had been a fifth channel in the Tulsa market, 23 DuMont but it failed with its network (which was before my time). It came back on the air in the early 1980’s, as an independent and then Fox affiliate, and was followed by an increasing number till today there are 2, 6, 8, 11, 17, 19, 23, 35, 41, 44, 47, and 53.
My sister and I solved that issue, we sat reeeeaalll close to the screen. 
I did the same thing and still have the cassette tapes, complete with my mother’s laughter and the cuckoo clock if we forgot to shut it off. BTW, George is the stumbling block to re-releasing the shows - Will has the masters and wants to do it but his brother is being stubborn.
We always lived on base until we moved to Spokane, and we always could get the 3 networks with either rabbit ears or the big antenna. Wish I had saved the antenna when my parents died - the one my husband has from ages ago has one broken spoke he has tied on with twine.
I wonder what, if anything, would make him change his mind? I’d happily buy all the old shows…heck, they’re what turned me on to the music, and ultimately on to the language! I know that some of the segments were kind of cheesy, but heck…it was the 1970s!
Talk to us, George…please!
I had all the old tapes until fairly recently, but they’d been played so much that they really weren’t playable anymore.
The other thing that’s sad is that most of the old records aren’t available on CD. I played my “Live from the CBC” album for almost 20 years, until it finally became unplayable. Their version of “Sweet Thames Flow Softly” is definitive.
Redwolf
The deadline extension was likely planned from the start.
Didn’t your parents warn you repeatedly that you that the toxic tv rays were going to mutate you into humanoid freaks?